2020/12/14

Kazuhide Horiguchi, President and CEO of Oshika Corp

Industry & Trade | Asia-Paciﬁc |JapanMonday, Dec 14, 2020

Oshika, Japan
Leading wood adhesives makerlooks to go global
12 hours ago

Kazuhide Horiguchi, President and CEO of Oshika Corp
Kazuhide Horiguchi
President and CEO of Oshika Corp
Oshika Corporation is a top manufacturer of over 1,000 kinds of wood adhesives and general construction materials tried andtrusted by satisﬁed clients in Japan and across the world. We speak with president Kazuhide Horiguchi to learn more about thecompanyʼs products and how Oshika not only supplies their customers with the highest performing products, but also oﬀers
training to the customers on how to best utilize those products.
In the last 25 years, you have seen the rise of cheaper competitors such as China and Taiwan. They have replicated theJapanese monozukuri process at a cheaper cost enabling them to be the B2C leaders. In the advanced technologicalﬁelds, however, Japan has maintained its leadership status. Would you please tell us your view as to how Japan has
maintained its leadership in this ﬁeld and what role has monozukuri played for Japan in order for it to stay at the top?
I believe that the strength of Japanese monozukuri lies in the fact that Japanese companies continue to manufacture incollaboration with their clients. The manufacturers always maintain close contact with their clients and are able to produce suchhigh-quality monozukuri. In a sense, it is like playing catch with the client.
We are mainly dealing with adhesives for wooden construction material. Depending on the changes of the seasons, the region, andthe variety of wood, the adhesive used for construction materials also varies. No matter whether we work in Japan or abroad, wemake sure that we go to where the clients are in order to establish the right communication pathways to provide the most optimalservices.

How are you able to provide high-quality products when you produce outside of Japan?
For example, one of Oshika members based in Indonesia always oﬀers our clients how to get the best performance out of ouradhesives as well as the exact adhesives which are most suitable for their materials. Our job doesnʼt end with just selling thewww.theworldfolio.com/interviews/leading-wood-adhesives-maker-looks-to-go-global/4803/

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Kazuhide Horiguchi, President and CEO of Oshika Corp

adhesives to our clients, we help them in the manufacturing process as well. We aid them on how best to utilize our adhesives. We
also provide technical training online to our client in the case we are not able to be on location.

The adhesives market is expected to boom in the upcoming years due to the housing industryʼs need for moreadhesives. We are seeing this growth in emerging countries such as those in the Asia Paciﬁc region and also indeveloped countries within North America. How do you plan to take advantage of this growth?
With adhesives, it is very important that the production is localized, we also have an exporting business where we export certain
Japanese-manufactured products to Indonesia, Russia, Philippines, Korea, Brazil among others, so that we form diﬀerent types ofpartnership styles with our clients overseas. Depending on the situation, we may form joint ventures or may license out ourproducts with our clients or local adhesive manufacturers.
The kind of strategy we are taking comes with an understanding that it is extremely diﬃcult to begin an overseas business only byourselves. We believe that it is in our best interest to partner with other companies which have high technologies in order to work
together with trustworthy partners. By establishing a strong form of trust, we can provide them with our recipe so that we canexpand in that country.
We are implementing this strategy in Indonesia, Vietnam, Malaysia, Philippines, New Zealand and most of Europe. As the
pandemic complicates these eﬀorts, we can only meet and speak with our partners remotely. Though China has strict
environmental restrictions, we are contemplating the expansion there by working with new partners.

You were founded in 1905 with the philosophy of “World Quality from a Century Company”. Could you please tell us
what your main competitive advantages are and what makes Oshika Corporation the go-to partner when it comes toadhesives in the housing industry?
I think our greatest strength is that we boast over 1000 types of adhesives that are adaptable to any varieties of wooden
construction materials. Though there are big adhesive manufacturers in the world, the strategy that we follow to grow going toeto-toe against such manufacturers is not just selling adhesives, but also supporting our clients in a manufacturing process to workin niche areas.

Your company has two main divisions: the chemical division where you develop adhesives, and the building materials
division. Would you please be able to give us an overview of each division and your strategies within each division?
We have two core businesses, the ﬁrst being the adhesives and the second being building materials such as plywood, wooden
structural members and ﬂooring materials. With regards to adhesives, they are mostly for wooden materials but we plan to expand
our business catering to the automotive industry and IT tools in the future. The plywood business is mostly a domestic one.
Adhesives, however, can be expanded around the world. Our adhesives business will be the focal point in our plans to expand
globally.

How do you plan to expand globally and is there a speciﬁc market you are focusing on?
The adhesive that we want to expand globally is called the aqueous polymer isocyanate adhesive. This kind of adhesive is used infurniture and laminated lumber. It is a core competitive advantage of ours and we are planning to take it across the globe.

In your second business, you are involved in wooden construction materials. Because of the decline in population inJapan, the housing industry is also declining.
With the decline in the Japanese population, you might see a decline in the number of construction materials used for housing.
However, due to government support, you are starting to see wooden materials now be utilized in the larger facilities like thecreation of kindergartens, storage facilities and gyms, as well as in the public buildings like the municipal ward oﬃces,
government buildings, etc. We think it is a growing market and contributes to the realization of a sustainable society.

Many Japanese companies are investing in R&D in order to be more competitive in their respective industries. Do you
have any upcoming products or technologies that you would like to showcase to us?
We are not such a large company with around 410 employees as a group. Among those, 50 of them are in the R&D department.
We are currently focusing on a hot melt adhesive and we are looking to introduce this adhesive into the market. Focusing on
applying this adhesive to the automotive industry, housing industry, and IT and electronics industry. In addition to that, one of ourbreakthrough adhesives which utilizes a natural material “lignin” is also an adhesive that we would like to introduce in the future.
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2020/12/14

Kazuhide Horiguchi, President and CEO of Oshika Corp

In order to introduce a product into a new ﬁeld, many Japanese companies are using co-creation and co-developmentwith foreign companies, coupling the Japanese monozukuri with foreign technologies. Are you actively looking forforeign partners speciﬁcally to participate in co-creation activities?
We have a joint venture in Indonesia, and apart from this venture, we have out-licensing partnerships with other countries that I
cannot disclose much information about. In that partnership, we are doing co-creation. It is a new project in which we have signed
an MOU and co-create by licensing each otherʼs products.

I would like to speak about your production system called the GIR joint system. Would you please tell us the competitive
advantage of this system and where would we be able to ﬁnd this system in action?
Wooden material construction used by GIR instead of steel and RC contributes to sustainability. Our glued-in rod system is used inseveral diﬀerent buildings across Japan.
For this GIR system, it's not just about selling the adhesive, but rather training the client on how to best carry out construction
work. The GIR system requires a sturdy glue gun that uses an apparatus that you have to don on your shoulder to inject the glue
into the materials. Training is highly recommended and provided by us in order for users to be able to use this gun and apply theadhesives correctly.
Even when this system was applied to the airport terminal, we had our sales staﬀ, as well as one of our researchers, go to helpand provide technical training. We would like to apply this method to expand our business overseas.

Your company is 115 years old. What does the future hold for Oshika? What is your midterm strategy to continue
corporate growth?
Our mid-term strategy is to be a ﬂagship company for wood adhesives domestically. We develop adhesives which can be utilized inother new ﬁelds, giving clients technical assistance and strengthening sales as well as developing more highly functional adhesivesfor wood. And we plan to internationally expand Japanese high-quality adhesives by appealing our “world-quality adhesives forwood” upon looking for partners we can work with.

What is your international strategy?
Our strategy is to expand our business focusing on technical support and sales support by utilizing licensing, instead of capital
investment. What this means is that we need to adapt each expansionʼs strategies to the region we are trying to expand to. We
also would expand into areas where there is already a Japanese-aﬃliated ﬁrm established and assist them with their needs.
We also work with foreign partners already established in the same sector as us and develop a mutual partnership in order toexpand. We have used this strategy to expand in Southeast Asia.

Do you have any country in the West that you would be interested in expanding to?
We would like to try to expand in the West. However, adhesives for wood that can be used in the West may vary, depending on
the diﬀerences between wood species and origins, which requires diﬀerent materials than what we are used to here. For the Westwe would have to use CLT adhesives that are urethane-based, so we still have a lot of challenges we need to work on.

At the beginning of this interview, you mentioned you always work with your customers in order to provide them withthe best products and services. What would you like the Oshika brand to stand for, for your customers?
For clients, we want the Oshika brand to represent “a business partner who can solve any problems with technology”. I heard that
one of our clients said “If I leave our factory to Oshika, it can be operating without any worry”. Not being just a mere supplier, but
proceeding business by working with clients is the Oshika brand.

Imagine we come back to interview you in two years. What would you like to have accomplished in those two years?
What are your dreams for Oshika?
Our dream is to increase brand-awareness of Oshika . From technical support to sales activities, we want Oshika to be a ﬂagshipcompany of the industry by gaining trust and faith that cannot be achieved by being a mere supplier.

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Kazuhide Horiguchi, President and CEO of Oshika Corp

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